Gate of the Cthulhu
by shadowmaat
Summary: Jonas relates the horrific events of SG-1's doomed mission to the planet Yuggoth.


_This fic delves into HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. It answers a challenge set by the editors of Pink Khaki to write in the style of a famous author. The result is a bit muddied, but hopefully stays true to the dark heart of the Lovecraftian universe._

Of the events which I am about to relate, I can testify only to that which I witnessed with my own eyes. There have been countless times over the dimless hours since it all started when I have prayed fervently for it all to have been nothing more than the fevered ramblings of a brain gone mad with terror. Indeed, at times I can almost believe it, so horrific are the images graven in my mind. But, alas! The gift which has served me so well in the past now serves as my greatest curse, forcing me to remember every painful detail.  
  
On the day when our doomed mission began, there was no hint of forboding, no outward sign of the fathomless horror that awaited us on T1W-2W4, which the locals called Yuggoth. Oh, how I long to reach back into time, to cry out a warning to my dear companions, all of whom are now lost to me; lost to that dread, cyclopean monstrosity that dwelled within the vast underground tomb near the seaside village of Innsmouth! Even now I can see them as they were in their glory. Colonel Jack O'Neill, the leader of our expedition; a seasoned man of great courage and wit who had seen many battles and lived to tell the tale. His undaunting will served as an example to us all. Major Samantha Carter; a willowy woman of surprising strength and agility. She may have been O'Neill's second in command, but in skill and charity she was equal to, if not better, than most men. Teal'c; a warrior from an alien world whose strength and stamina are unsurpassed, though it did him little good against that stygean darkness we so foolishly attempted to fight. Then there was myself, Jonas Quinn, a small figure in the company of greatness. I am, by nature and education, merely an historian and diplomat, and thus it has become my sad fate to chronicle the disaster of this past June 30th in the hopes that somehow, I might get word back to Stargate Command and warn them of this new and unutterable menace which threatens the very fabric of the cosmos.  
  
We arrived at the village of Innsmouth while the sun was still high, and were in good spirits, having recently uncovered another cache of the Ancients. The clues within their tablets were what had brought us here, searching for more evidence of the fabled city of Atlantis, a location which our colleague Dr. Daniel Jackson had assured us was of extreme significance and benefit to us all.  
  
In days far past, when the universe was still burning with the hot youth of creation, a wise and benevolent culture had arisen. Known to us as the Ancients, they were the creators of many splendours, including the Stargate network, an immense celestial web which brought both wonders and terrors to those otherwise untouched by the deeps beyond space. It was hoped that the discovery of Atlantis, thought to be their last stronghold, would aide us in our battle against the serpentine parasites who preyed upon the scattered cultures of humanity; the Goa'uld.  
  
The village was surprisingly modern in appearance, reminding Carter of coastal New England around the turn of the century, before the advent of electricity. The people were reserved but welcoming and one in particular, a Captain Akeley by name, spoke at length with O'Neill on the subject of fishing. It seemed that the waters off Innsmouth nearly boiled with fish, and the business helped to keep the village alive. Sensing that their conversation could last a long while, I busied myself with an investigation of the local library, accompanied by Teal'c. Carter remained behind with O'Neill and Akeley, whose abnormal appearance I soon realised seemed to be a trait among the locals. I commented on the strangeness to Teal'c, but he merely raised his eyebrow at me and said nothing. There were no signs of hostility among the villagers, and that was all that was of importance to him.  
  
My own curiosity on the subject, coupled with a vague disquiet, drove me to ask the local librarian about the condition. Miss Mason herself bore some of the strange characteristics; stooped shoulders and greyish skin, bulbous eyes and strange, deep creases in the sides of her neck.  
  
"Please forgive me if I'm prying, but I can't help but notice some of the unusual features of your people. Have you always been this way?" I smiled to show I meant no harm. "Or are you perhaps recovering from an epidemic? The ravages of disease can have some unusual results, from what I've seen. Although in most cases the people who were affected had been helped into that condition. You haven't by any chance been visited by a woman named Nirrti, have you?"  
  
"She is not of this village," Miss Mason replied, her voice betraying a slight lisp, "and I have not heard her name before. I don't know what you mean by our being 'different'. We are no more different than you, or your unusual friend, here." She gestured at Teal'c, her eyes reflecting the lamplight.  
  
Sensing that I was in danger of giving offense, I quickly changed the subject and then began my perusal of the library's shelves. There were many curious volumes among the small collection, things I would not have expected in such a rural village. One of these was what appeared to be an original copy of something I had encountered among Dr. Jackson's possessions. His had been nothing more than a sheaf of loose parchment, hastily bound and, according to his notes, poorly translated. Many pages were also missing, making any real understanding of its content impossible, but there were certain passages which seemed to refer to the Ancients, although the book called them the Elder Gods. Here, in this remote outpost of humanity, I had found a complete edition of the Necronomicon. It was bound in a strange, papery leather which I was unusually reluctant to touch, and the writing inside had faded over the many years, but it was still legible.  
  
My head throbbed with the effort of trying to translate and read the obscure text. Most of the book seemed to be written in an old form of Arabic, although I recognised parts as being Sumerian and there were many symbols I had never seen before and hope to never see again. There was a wrongness, a profanity about them, and about the book itself that defied logic. What parts I was able to understand filled me with loathing and gave me a sense that I had somehow been tainted by what I had read.  
  
Night was already descending as Teal'c and I prepared to leave the library. I had asked to take the book with me so that I might study it further, but Miss Mason objected. "It is not for Outsiders," she told us, and no amount of begging, reassurance, or even charm seemed to work to sway her. Had Teal'c not been with me, I don't think we would have been allowed out of the library with it. As it was, Teal'c swore an oath that we would protect the book at all costs and see that no harm came to it, and that we would return the book by the first light of day. She watched me as I carefully wrapped and placed the book in my backpack and I could feel her luminous eyes on us as we walked back towards the village center where we had left O'Neill, Carter, and the fisherman Akeley.  
  
The setting of the sun brought with it a sense of foreboding, and as we approached the dimly lit center of town, my steps faltered. I saw Teal'c adjust his grip on his staff weapon and knew by that move that he felt a similar uneasiness, as if we were walking into danger.  
  
O'Neill and Carter were not where we had left them, and close inquiry with the village's leader, Nahum, revealed that they had left with Akeley to explore a cave near the darkened shoreline. This went against O'Neill's own orders, and even if he had changed his mind, he would have notified us over the radio. I told as much to Nahum, but all he did was repeat the story. I tried to reach O'Neill and Carter on the radio but met only silence.  
  
"Perhaps the cave is causing interference," Teal'c suggested. The idea was a good one, although I do not think either of us believed it. We asked for a guide to take us to the cave in search of O'Neill and Carter, but Nahum was reluctant to let us go.  
  
"It will all be over soon and then you shall rejoin your companions and we will have a great feast, the likes of which has not been seen since the Ancient One last woke from His slumber!"  
  
Though his words seemed innocent enough, they filled me with a nameless dread and hardened my resolve to search for our missing teammates. When it became obvious that Teal'c and I could not be swayed, Nahum agreed to give us a guide to the cave. "Barnabas has traversed the path many times and knows the vents of the cave as well as most know their own homes."  
  
As he stepped forward I saw that Barnabas displayed extreme signs of the same mutation I had noticed in the others. He was thin and hunched, and the fingers of his hands curled inward. His arms were too long for his body and his grayish skin was peeling, though not from exposure to any sun. As he gestured towards the sea, I caught a glimpse of a band around his wrist; a band which bore a remarkable resemblance to the bracelets worn by both O'Neill and Carter. I hoped that was mistaken and that the familiarity of the band was mere coincidence; otherwise it did not bode well for our friends.  
  
Our guide spoke little as he led us down a long and sinuous path which seemed to draw no closer to our destination. His head was kept bowed and hooded by a grayish robe and had Teal'c and I not made use of our flashlights we would not have been able to distinguish him from the night around us as he seemed not to require any light of his own, navigating the twists of the path as if the sun still burned in the sky.  
  
The full moon glowed red and baleful above us, casting a bloody glow on the landscape that hindered rather than helped our vision. It seemed to pull brightness from the air, so that even the beams of our flashlights seemed dimmed, and the stars no more than a trick of perception. I sensed more than heard a distant sibilance which came not from the sea but from all around us, as if the land itself were trying to speak. Movement as well added to that impression, though there were never any shapes or figures when our muted beams swept the wilds around us.  
  
"Jonas Quinn, I believe we are being followed." Teal'c's voice, though barely a whisper, seemed to boom outward, and I started at the noise, so long had I been straining to detect some hint of who- or what- pursued us.  
  
"I know, Teal'c, but there isn't much we can do about it." I kept my own voice low, though I had little doubt that our guide could hear us as his pace momentarily slowed. "We need to find Colonel O'Neill and Major Carter so we can get out of here, and right now, it looks as if this is the only way we can hope to accomplish that."  
  
"Indeed." Teal'c remained quiet for a moment before continuing with some hesitancy. "I detect a great malignancy nearby. There is something the villagers have not told us and I believe we should proceed with extreme caution."  
  
"You think?" I muttered, my nerves momentarily getting the better of me. "Sorry Teal'c. You're absolutely right. I don't know what it is, but there's something wrong about this place and its people."  
  
"Come... come..." Barnabas intoned, beckoning with an elongated arm. "This way."  
  
I saw that we had at last arrived at the cave, although I was quite certain that moments earlier we had still been a good distance away from it. The entrance was overgrown with strange protrusions of rock which distorted our lights in a singularly unnatural way. I was put strongly in mind of a vast, gaping maw, waiting to devour the unwary who dared to try and cross its path. Standing there before that primordial cavern, the hissing became more distinct, and my skin prickled at the sound of it. A stench as well seemed to lurk nearby, wrapping its foul tendrils around our throats and choking us with the odour of rot and things long dead. I wanted nothing more than to turn and head back to the village, or better yet to pass the village and return through the Stargate, leaving this blasphemous planet and its perverse inhabitants far behind. But duty and my concern for my friends dragged me forward, past the diseased green jaws and into the space beyond.  
  
We stopped again almost at once and tried to comprehend what we were seeing. "Cave" was not an accurate word to describe the interior of the place, so staggering and demented were the proportions. It seemed larger than it appeared from the outside and followed no natural geography. The angles were all wrong and contradictory, and the walls, if that is indeed what they were, seemed to stretch and condense all at one time. The floor sloped, though I could not say in what direction. Everything about the place stirred within me a sense of deep revulsion and fear. The whispering in the dark was now more distinct, and my skin crawled at the sound of the unnatural syllables, which seemed designed for no human tongue. "Cthulhu fhtagn," they chanted, which I knew to mean "Cthulhu sleeps." My hands shook as I played the beam of my flashlight over the floor ahead of us. The guide was still motioning for us to follow him. I looked at Teal'c. His expression spoke volumes. We knew well that we were walking into danger, but O'Neill and Carter were not merely the commanding force of our team, they were our good friends and the closest thing to family that we had on Earth. The only family I had. Whatever unfathomable evil lurked within the deep bowels of the ground, whatever slim chance we might have at surviving, we had to try. Teal'c took the lead as we continued to follow our guide through the labyrinthine hallways whose form and shape defied the laws of physics. The air grew damp and fetid with the cloying scent of decay, causing both myself and Teal'c to gag though I noticed once again that our guide seemed not to be troubled.  
  
It was then that we entered upon a cavern of unimaginable dimensions, designed in the same sickening architecture as the rest of the blighted acropolis. The walls cast a sickly glow upon a nightmarish scene. Misshapen figures in robes alike to our guide's slithered upon the stone floor, undulating to the rhythm of their continued chanting, "Cthulhu fhtagn."  
  
Teal'c was the first to look up, and the roar that was ripped from his throat echoed through the cyclopean chamber, swelling until it drowned out the chanters themselves. My own throat constricted beyond the ability for speech or breath. Upon a pedestal of greenish black stone was an immense sarcophagus, and collapsed before it, clothed in a robe with spreading stains, was the still figure of Carter. If life still clung to her, we could not tell. Teal'c was already in motion, attempting to cross that abhorrent tide of inhumanity to reach her side, and after a frozen moment of shock I followed with my weapon unslung and my finger on the trigger.  
  
The villagers, for that is who the robed figures were, offered us no resistance, instead throwing themselves flat to the glistening floor of the cave, their chanting silenced. That is when I noticed movement on the pedestal and glanced up to see the sarcophagus in motion; it was opening! We would not be able to reach Carter in time, but still we ran.  
  
Thus it was that we were nearing the base of the pedestal when the ground beneath us heaved, dropping us to our knees. An unearthly keening filled the air and from the sarcophagus rose a single, monstrous clawed hand of the same repellant green-black as the stone. What followed was the sheerest nightmare of terror and unrelenting madness, the grips of which hold me still, drowning in a sea of my own tortured memories.  
  
The eldritch abomination Cthulhu rose from its ageless slumber, unfolding its gelatinous corpulence in ways that defied and befouled Nature. It towered above us, a distorted horror spawned in the fathomless places between the stars. From its misshapen head sprung a mass of tentacles writhing with unseemly life and vile wings protruded from its hunched back. It was easy now to see where the villagers had acquired their repugnant appearance. Teal'c was firing at it non-stop with his staff weapon and I had unloaded an entire clip into its scaled and pulpy side. It seemed to take no notice of our actions, and in one impossibly swift move it had snatched up Carter. Words could never describe the unrelenting tragedy of what happened next, and once more I fell to my knees, overwhelmed by despair and remorse. My stomach emptied itself of what fluids it possessed, and as I hunched forward, caught by another spasm, my backpack chanced to shift, reminding me of the book I still carried with me. Before I could retrieve it, an inhuman scream rent the air, made all the more horrible because I could still recognise within it Teal'c's distinctive voice. The noise ended in a sickening gurgle and even now my mind gibbers and recoils from the horror that I witnessed then. Of O'Neill's fate I saw no sign, though I knew within the trembling coils of my heart that he must be dead, for surely nothing less could have prevented him from saving Carter.  
  
Stripped of all rationality, I was only distantly aware that I was running, the contradictory architecture seeming to expand and contract around me like the pulsing of a massive, poisonous heart. At times I stumbled and even fell over rocks and other unseen shapes, but still I continued my mad flight until at last I burst forth into the chill night air. I could hear the shuffling, grunting sounds of pursuit behind me and knew that I would not make it to the stargate alive. Instead I ran to the beach and in the sand I drew a protective circle as I had seen mentioned in the Necronomicon, then stood within it and retrieved the book from my pack.  
  
Though I am a man of science and have little faith in the trappings of magic, I had seen too much and lost too many friends to dare doubt anything. The book opened to a page containing a charm against demons, and under the bloody moon, I began to shout. "ISA YA! ISA YA! RI EGA! RI EGA!" The hordes of half-human shapes poured fourth from the mouth of the cave, shambling towards me in the manner of crabs. I was certain that all was lost, that I would die like my beloved companions and that the rest of the universe would never know of the terrible malignancy which had awakened on Yuggoth. But by some miracle of chance, the monstrous villagers were reluctant to approach the circle. I was not certain how long my luck would hold, or what would happen when their dark master at last arrived.  
  
My P-90, which had proved ineffective against that immense blasphemy, worked to hideous effect upon its servants. They died in swarms and the stench of their passing wass that of the creature. Their numbers were ceaseless, and no matter how many I killed, there were always more to take their place. In a hope born of delerium, I had thought that the rising of the sun would banish this waking nightmare and give me some thin chance of escape, but many hours have passed since I stumbled from that undead acropolis, and still there is no hint of a lightening in the sky. Less than one clip of ammunition remains to me now, a mere handful of bullets against the teeming multitude, and I dare not waste any more on the villagers, who have grown quiet; waiting. I can feel IT approaching. Cthulhu comes, and all is truly lost. Cthulhu comes, and I cannot stop it. Cthulhu comes, and I can feel it calling to me. May the gods forgive me for what I am about to do. ISA YA! ISA YA! INA ZUMRI YA ISA YA!  
  
Editor's Note: The previous entry was discovered in the journal of Jonas Quinn, of late a member of SG-1. It should be noted that although SG-1 did indeed have a mission to T1W-2W4, they encountered no troubles there and all returned home safe. Of the village mentioned, there was no sign, nor were there any traces of the people or creature mentioned; the planet appeared to have been long abandoned. When questioned, Mr. Quinn could offer no explanation for the strange entry. Although he confirmed that it is his handwriting, he has no memory of penning it. Shortly after returning, a fire broke out in his lab, burning several rare parchments and a small quantity of books. Scraps of leather were discovered among the ashes and identified as being human in origin. An investigation is ongoing.


End file.
